6 Mental Health Issues your Team Might be Facing

We’ll only begin to understand the full mental health toll of the pandemic years from now.  However, there is some consistency in the findings of various employee surveys which are worth noting as you continue to support your teams. 

CharlieHR, a UK-based HR software provider, used data from a survey of 1,460 UK employees to look at the state of mental health at work.   Their findings may sound familiar.  They echo other surveys we’ve read and we wanted to publish the main points to remind managers of the pressures that their teams are likely still feeling.

• People are working longer: on average 40% of those surveyed worked more on weekends and in evenings than before the pandemic. This was more acute in London, in the tech industry, and in companies of between 10 and 100 employees.

• People don’t feel they can take leave: 51% of those surveyed said they felt guilty booking time off, and 30% took less leave than normal over the same time period. 45% of employees reported that they felt they had to reply to work messages out of working hours.

• People feel close to burnout: an astonishing 79% of people agreed that they often felt close to burnout.

• People are worried about looking busy whilst remote: over 40% of those surveyed had fears around being perceived as hard-working given they were not in the office.

• People feel their working relationships are suffering: an average of 40% felt that interpersonal communication within their teams has suffered, and 48% that they found it harder to relate to their colleagues.

• People don’t feel they’re getting mental health support: one in three employees feel their mental health support at work is inadequate, and 43% feel unable to talk to their managers about this subject.

Now, we acknowledge that this data was initially collected by a company seeking to sell mental health software solutions.  But even if a fraction of those numbers above are reflective of our teams, there’s an awful lot of work to do. 

And underlying all of this, we as managers face significant challenges in helping. According to the survey, 4 in 5 managers didn’t feel equipped to manage employee mental health issues.  This really resonates. It’s one of the hardest things we’re called upon to do.  

If you’d like more guidance on how to help your team through issues like this, you may wish to discuss specific training with your own manager when you next meet with them.